Ambiguity
by KakashiLove4ever
Summary: Talent scout Hatake Kakashi visits the Shinobi of Konoha to see Team Seven, and finds a younger girl everything he wants. Haruno Sakura pours her broken heart into her music, and needs him to listen. But are they able to hear each other?[AU ONESHOT].


_**Ambiguity **– (noun) doubtfulness or obscurity in regards to interpretation, of an uncertain meaning._

He takes a deep breath, inhaling the familiar scent of the club with relief. It has been far too long since he's tasted the intoxicating air, a day spent trapped in an office with snobby businessmen that smirk at his Levi jeans and leather jacket. They can be as bitchy as they want; he's the best they have because he knows the streets and the clubs. He knows what it's like to be an ordinary listener, because that's all he is.

He's a city kid that grew up in the live music cafes, son of another suicidal rock star.

It doesn't matter that he's never been to the _Shinobi of Konoha_ before; the smell is always the same. The cloy mixture of smoke, sweat, and alcohol greets him like an old friend.

He is home, back in the nightclubs of the city.

The bar is almost empty, it is too early for the eleven o'clock rush of regulars, and the band is just beginning to set up.

A dark haired woman with the reddest brown eyes he's ever seen watches him enter, but he stares straight at her with a look that says he's not interested. She's pretty enough, and her clothes and hard eyes mark her for a city girl, but he has a job tonight.

Pouting at him, she turns away, but not without a friendly smile that he returns. He knows her, Yuhi Kurenai, a sometimes girlfriend for the nights when he feels alone.

His attention turns to the band, a recommendation from one of his downtown friends. _Team Seven_ they call themselves, by the flyer hanging crookedly from the wall.

_A bunch of kids_, he thinks, watching them testing the microphones and tuning their guitars with practiced motions. He is impressed though; they look young enough to still be in school and are able to get a steady gig, even if it's in a run down place like this. Asuma tells him they have been playing here every week for months, and are the favorites of the local bar-goers.

Sitting down near the back of the dark room, he examines them unnoticed by anyone but the red-eyed girl. The drummer grabs his attention first, pumping out a rhythm energetically in a frenzy of drumsticks. The boy next to him yells for him to shut up while he's tuning and turns up his amplifier with a look of annoyance, bringing a grin to their unseen audience.

He likes them already.

Preconceptions are bad, he knows. When he thinks a band have potential before they strike a note, they tend to scare him away after the first song when they fail to meet any expectations. A talent scout knows that the hits come from looking carefully. Seeing underneath the underneath, he calls it.

The last member of _Team Seven_ is the one that catches his eye. Asuma talked about her. Though it may have been more because of her slender legs than her voice, he thinks dryly.

He smiles, though, at her bubble gum pink hair. _That can't be natural._ It falls in waves to her shoulders, glowing softly in the dim lighting as she adjusts her microphone. A blue ribbon holds her bangs back, letting them fall and frame her gentle face.

He runs his eyes over her body slowly, admiring the way her short black dress hugs her contours. It's part of the job, he tells himself. You have to look like a celebrity to ever become one. When his eyes move back to her face, he's surprised to see bright green eyes fixed with his own. She is as well, and turns away with a flush to her cheeks that could have been merely a trick of the light. _Great, now she thinks I'm a pervert._

Unconsciously, he watches her graceful form as she bends to pick up a guitar. Only when she straightens he realizes what he's doing and looks away, glad the shadows can hide his embarrassment.

_I'm checking out a fucking high school girl, what kind of jackass am I? I'll just hurt the kid if I lead her on._

Torn between the urge to talk to her and disgust at his own twisted behavior, he inspects the other two band members as a buyer would regard potential purchases. The drummer has not lost any of his energy, and radiates it as he shows off on his set. Blond hair sticks out in all directions in a messy manner that invites girls to touch it. Coupled with wide-eyed baby blues, he is the image of feisty innocence.

It is a sharp contrast to the bass player beside him, the dark and handsome rebel that instantly steals the heart of the romantic with a stare. His hands slide over his instrument in a caressing, gentle manner with a careful smoothness. He says something to the girl that is drowned out in the drumming when their silent judge tries to hear it.

The girl nods in return and the drumming dies out as she turns on her microphone and speaks softly into it.

She has been watching him from the moment he came in.

A powerful grace shows through every movement as he slinks into the _Shinobi of Konoha_, regarding the building with a scornful look she finds strikingly attractive. His hair is so light it appears silver through the haziness of the smoky air.

She watches the older man as he moves to a table in the back of the building, his black jacket melting into the shadows like ink spilled across the night sky. Noticing Sasuke following her eyes with a smirk, she turns to glare at him defiantly.

"It's not what you think," she mumbles. He doesn't reply, just grins a knowing smile.

_I thought I was over childhood crushes when I gave up Sasuke. I'm not an idiot enough to obsess over someone older, way older. I'm not that stupid. I'm not in love with someone I'll never have._

_It hurts too much._

But as soon the eyes of her dark haired friend return to his bass, she turns back, watching the fair-haired stranger fiddle with the beer in his hand. Her eyes run over the worn jeans and grayed sneakers that only add to his dangerous, rugged look.

As if sensing her stare, he looks up to meet her eyes with a blank stare. Burning with mortification, she turns away from him quickly, her pink hair flowing behind her. Her blush heats her face and she feels sweat form on her cheeks and the back of her neck.

She runs the experience over in her head, thinking of all the things she could and should have done. Why didn't she wink at him, or smile at least. Instead she turned away like a frightened idiot, and made herself look like the high school sophomore she is. She knows a girl like her would have no chance.

But she can dream. She sees his face again, ingrained after only the second when their eyes met, seeing his painfully handsome face flashing like a film before her eyes.

Those eyes.

She knows she wasn't imagining it; she can't have mistaken their color as a trick of the light. Both are half-closed in a way that makes him appear as if he's just stepped out of bed, matching the mussed hair that seems too perfect to be natural. The right is a normal enough black, but the left is a blood red.

_That can't be natural. _She thinks, but red is her new favorite color. Suddenly she realizes she's emulating the stranger she's never spoken to. He's a stranger who must be ten years older than her. She hates herself for it.

_I'm so fucking desperate I'd sleep with a hot guy I don't even know._

With her back to the stranger, she takes her electric guitar gently from her gig bag. In a moment of foolish hope, she wonders if he's eyeing her short dress as she bends down from the waist.

But she knows it doesn't work that way. The stories she writes in her songs are nothing more than fairy tales built to sell to the desperate ones like her.

Life isn't a love song.

"Hey, you ready to go? The idiot obviously is, the way he's killing our eardrums. Too bad he plays like that during the songs too," Sasuke's soft and silky voice still brings a hollow feeling to her stomach that she hides with a smile as she nods and steps up to the microphone with a deep breath.

Naruto's drumming slows behind her as he fades out, with a final crash on the cymbals for good measure.

"Hey, we're _Team Seven_, of the _Shinobi of Konoha_. Our first song is _The Road of Life_." Her voice is clear and ageless, bubbling up from her throat like the playful water in a rocky brook.

He looks around, surprised at the amount of people that have snuck in around him unnoticed while he was occupied by the band, or rather the singer. A few girls meet his mismatched eyes with obvious interest, but he ignores them.

The café is crowded with a mass of bodies. The dance floor between the band and the tables swells with people as the song begins.

It is obviously a crowd favorite, he notes, as most of the crowd mouths the words in imitation of the cherry red lips of the singer. He listens with a practiced ear to the music, smiling in appreciation of the song's title.

They play a few songs after that, making use of the perfect combination of the girl's light, clear voice and the husky whisper of the dark-haired bass guitarist.

He likes them enough, for kids, but they aren't good enough for a record deal, not yet. He takes another hidden, forbidden look at the teenage singer and heads toward the door amid the applause for another song. _It never would have worked._

As he up from the table and leaves a few bills for the beer, feeling the weight of another lonely day on his chest, a pleading voice comes through the gurgle of the crowd carrying a thousand moments of pain in three words.

"Please don't leave."

He turns instantly, and hardly dares to hope it is her.

But it is.

She watches him move to the exit, feeling as if her future is walking away with him. He's leaving again. It doesn't matter that it is a different guy, a different time, it is all too familiar.

_Please don't leave._

Except this time, this heartbreak, she says it out loud. It echoes through the microphone, saying far too little and meaning far too much. To her surprise, he turns to look at her impassively, waiting for something more.

All around them, people continue their lives, unaware her plea was something more than the beginning of the next song. She sees them moving around them, figures undisturbed by the flow of time.

And she begins to sing.

At first she isn't even sure which words are coming out of her mouth. Anything that will make him understand anything, or everything of who and what she is and what she needs.

"_She swears she's not heartbroken_

_Cause there's nothing left to break_

_But everything she has is his to take_

_She's his to make…"_

Then she knows what it is. They are the lyrics she began through the tears of Sasuke's rebuttals. The lines had flowed like rivers of emotion onto the paper for her to see the bareness of the lie she had lived for the past four years. But it had been too hard to finish, too wearying to be hurt every time she read them over. So in the end they became nothing more than memories taken out with next week's trash.

But here they are. And even if they are been written in another's memory, she sings them to the fair-haired stranger, herself unsure of her own intentions.

"_I watched you always, waiting_

_Hating fate, my own debating_

_Over right and wrong, you and me, _

_White and black or just a dull, dull grey._

_Like the morning before sunrise_

_Or the pure white snow_

_Forever tainted by my lies_

_Of a life that wouldn't be._

_And a whisper that is me…"_

She picks out a tentative melody on her electric guitar, finding it shockingly easy, feeling as if the music is writing itself to her lyrics. She doesn't blush or even feel uncomfortable staring into the mismatched eyes, and neither breaks the connection. Instead she begs for him to stay, for him to listen, and for him to see through her for who she really is.

"_I guess you're just a fleeting memory of sorrow_

_What's to live for but an empty tomorrow._

_An empty page stained by a drop of fallen liquid._

_A tear, an empty promise, or blood unbidden_

_But its not red, never red, just a dull, dull grey."_

They have never heard this song before, but they can hear the pain in her voice. Unsure at first, Naruto listens to the first verse with a aching heart then joins in with a soft beat on the bass drum, letting her voice lead him through the rhythms.

Sasuke realizes what the song refers to with a pang of guilt. In the middle of the verse, he begins to play a harmony on his bass with soft notes beneath her high voice. He plays in apology, sending a question of forgiveness in the only way he's comfortable.

She returns to the chorus, because that's all she ever wrote of this song. She's unsure of what she hopes to accomplish with words she wrote in a delusional state of heartbreak, but she plows through stubbornly.

"_She swears she's not heartbroken_

_Cause there's nothing left to break-"_

The black and red eyes turn away from her, and his lean body moves away with a finality that makes her voice falter as she chokes down a sob.

"_But everything she has is his to take_

_She's his to make…"_

He stands in the doorway now, pausing, as if asking her if that's all she has. If only he knew what each of his actions did to her mind. She feels the tears coming but she pushes them back, afraid, humiliated, and angered in a mix of emotions she fails to comprehend.

All she knows is she's lost him, if he was ever hers for a moment in time. Resigned, the rest of the song comes naturally, a last tribute to the nameless stranger, unwritten words that have been strung together in her mind by a sense of hopelessness uncontained. The words come out in a rush of bitterness at the world, and the beat of the drums speeds up to follow her voice.

"_Everything she has or ever was, _

_she's ever been or ever does_

_Is a choice tonight to stay or go,_

_For a chance or one to never know._

_A fairy tale is not this cruel,_

_The princess never played a fool_

_But I guess this where the story ends,_

_Where dreams dissolve and life begins,_

_Where white and black fade into tears,_

_Becoming everything that she fears,_

_And this song is all she ever hears,_

_While he leaves now and the future disappears..."_

_Disappears…disappears…_

_Into endless shades of grey…_

Her voice fades out into an empty silence that fills the room with an uncomfortable silence.

He's not sure, and yet he feels, or wishes, she is singing to him when she begins the song. But he knows the plea in her eyes is for someone else, someone younger, more deserving of the beautiful woman. The handsome jackass beside her perhaps, or the blond kid who doesn't seem to mind having to sit behind her and her form fitting dress. 

He's being bitter, and he knows it. He needs to leave, before this starts hurting any more than it already does. But he can't force himself to break the gaze as he stares into the innocent green eyes, wishing she was older, or he was younger, or that fate had given them better chances.

Then again, this is repeating drudgery of life, and staying longer will only be torturing himself. Steeling himself against his desires to sit and drown in the pain of her voice, he turns away and moves to leave for the second time that night with his shoulders set squarely in determination.

But her sure voice falters as he turns away, and he pauses, in regret that he would not be the one to hold her and cure that broken heart. If only she knew what each of her actions did to his mind.

In despair, he leans with his side against the wall, his head bowed and eyes closed as her voice flows through the last lines of the song. They are at once the most beautiful, and painful things he's ever heard. All he knows is he's lost her, if she was ever his for a moment in time. As the last note of her guitar dies out, he finds a single tear sliding down his face with surprise.

He doesn't cry, and he hasn't for years. The last time had been when he was a kid, and they found his father in a puddle of his own blood. Why the hell would he start crying now?

It wasn't really a question, he knows why.

Giving up the fight, he turns for a final look at the pink haired angel, and finds her standing silently on the stage looking at him. Her eyes follow the damp spot on his cheek as her own fill up with tears. He reaches across the room as if to wipe them away from her flushed face. She looks stunned as she takes off her guitar and moves sluggishly across the room to grab his outstretched hand in one of hers. The other reaches up to touch his damp cheek as their eyes lock once again in a stare of disbelief, yearning, and confusion.

Yet at the same time, they are in perfect understanding.

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Author's Notes: This is definitely the favorite fic I've written so far. I actually thought of the title before I wrote the story, but it pretty much wrote itself.

All song lyrics are original, written by yours truly.

Kakashi is mildly OOC.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of Naruto.


End file.
